Personal Asset Trust

The Personal Asset TrustSM is how we protect your beneficiaries inheritance from spouses, divorce, creditors, lawsuits, the IRS, and anyone else who might try to snatch it away from your beneficiary.

This form of Trust is based on over 100 years of asset protection law. Using statutes and case law, we have adapted and “imported this technology” into Living Trusts. The “Personal Asset Trust” is the result of over 7 years of research and development and thousands of dollars in fees paid to top asset protection experts. The “Personal Asset TrustSM” is not what other attorneys may refer to as a “Generation-Skipping Trust”, “Discretionary Trust” or “Dynasty Trust”. In fact, it is so unique that it is only offered by a small number of attorneys throughout the country. Our office has the privilege of offering it to you.

The “Old Way” of Estate Planning

In a typical Living Trusts, your beneficiaries receive their inheritance outright either immediately, over a certain period of time, or at certain ages. In other words, your assets are distributed out of the Trust and placed under the names of your beneficiaries. Unfortunately, by “owning” their inheritance, your beneficiaries are then needlessly exposed to the claims of spouses in divorce, creditors, lawsuits, the loss of governmental needs-based benefits, and potential estate taxes when their inheritance is handed down to the next generation of beneficiaries.

The New and Better Way

Instead of receiving their inheritance directly, each of your beneficiaries may instead receive their inheritance in a special trust, which springs out of your Living Trust. This continuing “Personal Asset TrustSM (or “PAT”) can be controlled by each beneficiary in such a manner as to give him or her all of the same rights as ownership, without the liability exposures ownership brings.

The “Personal Asset TrustSM uniquely balances the desire for potential asset protection with the desire to allow the beneficiary or beneficiaries the large degree of flexibility in controlling their inheritance and the level of protection for those assets.

How the PAT Works

The beneficiary may be his or her own initial Trustee in control of his or her own “Personal Asset TrustSM”. The beneficiary may control the investing of his or her inheritance, how and when it is distributed, and even who may receive it when that beneficiary passes away (if you wish, this right may be limited, such as only to your lineal descendants). The level of asset protection needed may be determined by the beneficiary after you’re gone with the advantage of looking at the beneficiary’s circumstances at that time. For example, if a moderate level of protection is appropriate, an independent Co-Trustee or sole Trustee may be brought in to sign on distributions. Or, if a greater level of asset protection is needed or desired, an independent “Trust Protector” can “lock down” the Trust from the attacks of third parties. In either case, the beneficiary may continue to indirectly control his or her inheritance, while enjoying additional asset protection.